Word: satrapi
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...Persepolis had its world premiere today at 4 p.m. And at the end of the film, cheers and applause rang through the Palais; the rhythmic clapping that is Cannes' way of saying "bravo" lasted for more than 15 minutes as Marjane Satrapi, the movie's Iranian-born director, was bathed in love and tears. She received hugs and congratulations from Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni (both in the film), and from two proud folks who looked like Satrapi's parents, as the huzzahs continued. The crowd was paying tribute not only to a funny, sometimes dark, always affecting story...
...Persepolis is that rare hybrid: an autobiographical animated feature. Based on Satrapi's four graphic novels, published in France beginning in 2000, the movie is a very personal, painful and somehow larkish retelling of her growing up Iranian under the repressive regime of the Shah (she was nine when he was overthrown), then under the even more brutal and soul-grinding Islamic Republic, before she emigrated to Europe as a student. She spends time back in Tehran with her family, and getting married, finally coming to rest in Paris, where she launched a career translating her and her family...
...Working with co-director Vincent Paronnaud (the celebrated comix artist known as Winshluss), Satrapi finds a simple, supple, almost monochrome visual style that allows the heroine's distinct voice and raucous wit. Even when the story turns from Iranian political melodrama into more familiar coming-of-age territory, Persepolis never loses its momentum, its sustaining sense of fun or its rapturous hold on the viewer...
...voices in the film's original French version are provided by Mastroianni, Deneuve and that goddess of 30s and 40s French cinema, Danielle Darrieux (as the grandmother). Other celebrities will voice the characters when Persepolis opens in the U.S. The reception is likely to be warm there - but will Satrapi ever experience anything like the epiphany of that first response to her film, one afternoon in Cannes...
...PLUMSMARJANE SATRAPIThe author of the Persepolis books continues to plumb her family history in Iran for fascinating stories. This one focuses on her great-uncle, a celebrated musician who, family lore says, decided to lie down and die after his wife broke his instrument, a tar, over her knee. Satrapi chronicles the eight remaining days of his life as he converses with his wife, his children, his friends and eventually the angel of death. Satrapi's simple black-and-white drawing style, combined with the fantastical elements of her narrative, turns Chicken with Plums into a great bedtime story...